


Ashes to Ashes

by fictorium



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: 80's Music, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/F, Fashion & Couture, Femslash, The 80s AU, Time Travel, Time Travelling Lesbians
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-27 23:07:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2710025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A *lot* of you just wanted some form of Mirandy. The ones with specific prompts will appear on other days, but for now I thought I'd finally post the first chapter of my Time Travel AU. </p><p>So. It's insane. But if you find fashion amusing now, imagine what it was like in the 80s. I've researched the history of Vogue in that decade, and I was already fascinated culturally and politically with so much of the years around when I myself was born, that it became a natural fit. If you've seen the UK 'Life on Mars' (please never, ever look up the American remake) or 'Ashes to Ashes', then you'll have a notion of what's going on here. Anyone confused at first, feel free to ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes to Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Time travel. AU. Andy is still working for Miranda when the action kicks off. Backstories for Emily and Nigel are mostly my own invention. Miranda's career borrows from a couple of famous editors, so similarities there are intentional.  
> Disclaimer: NOT MINE. Also, fashion in the 80s truly was horrendous. Sorry. At least this isn't a visual medium.

Andy is so busy pleading with Emily to cover for her (I'll only be three minutes late, I had to go to the store all the way down on Broad Street, please just distract her by telling her about Mario and the problem with the shoot) that she honestly doesn't see the step from sidewalk to the pressed black tarmac of the road itself.

There's a fleeting, almost exciting moment of weightlessness as gravity steps in to do the hard work. Andy watches, but doesn't feel the arc of her cellphone being thrown from her hand. The Hermès scarves that have cost her a sleepless night, a thirty minute detour and calling in a favor she'll need again before long, go sailing into the air in thirty different hues and colors. 

Andy can't quite work out what's making them do that, or why she's lying on something hard, looking up at the colorful display. She feels cold, cold enough to shiver despite the summer sun that's already glaring out from behind the clouds and towering buildings.

And then the pain kicks in. Kicks and screams and blinds her until she can taste acid in her throat and a ringing in her ears that sounds like the worst kind of church bell. Hands are on her now, muffled voices with intonation that suggest panic, or questions she isn't answering.

She opens her mouth to tell them that it hurts, no, it really, really fucking hurts, or maybe just to scream. There’s a fleeting vision of metal and yellow, almost like a taxi cab.

But the world goes very suddenly and very quietly black.

*

When she opens her eyes again, Andy is still lying in the middle of the road. Her head feels like she's drunk an entire bottle of tequila, though it appears she can move quite freely. It's only when she tries to stand that the nausea almost knocks her down again.

A steadying hand takes her arm, and Andy instinctively shrinks back from the little crowd that’s formed around her. She looks around frantically for the Hermès bags that left her grip as she fell, but they’re nowhere to be seen. There’s a huge black purse that she doesn’t remember even seeing in the Closet, never mind borrowing, but since it’s right next to where she fell, Andy picks it up.

“Miss? Miss?” Someone is trying to get her attention, but Andy can’t work out where the voice is coming from. She leans on the hood of the taxi that-- oh God, did it hit her? - is right there, and tries to catch her breath. No matter what happens, she needs to get to the office. Miranda will be there any minute and being late today, after a week of Miranda in one of her fouler moods, is too awful for Andy to contemplate.

The bags and scarves really are nowhere to be seen, so Andy decides to cut her losses. Some goddamn thief has probably already made off with them, and they’ll be getting sold to tourists on Canal Street before lunch.

Pressing carefully on her stomach, Andy finds nothing much wrong beyond a sharp pain where the cab must have made contact. She’s had worse playing lacrosse though, and so she’s confident she can walk it off. If it doesn’t clear up, it’s better to be taken from Elias-Clarke in an ambulance than to not show up at all. Her mouth tastes sort of metallic and she wishes she had anything to drink to take away the taste. She roots around in her purse but finds no bottled water.

Dammit, she really just has to get going; if nothing else, she really doesn’t want to add ‘late for work’ to this crappy, surreal morning. At least Emily can’t call to chew her out, since Andy’s Sidekick has apparently also fallen prey to the opportunistic pickpockets who stole the scarves. Thinking about Emily triggers a sort of tickling feeling in Andy’s brain. Is she expecting to hear from Emily? Is Emily pissed about something? (Wait, stupid question--when is Emily not pissed about something?) Shaking it off, she walks gingerly towards the cab driver, who’s staring at her with suspicion. 

“Totally my fault,” she says, with what she hopes is a disarming grin. He warms up a little at the smile. Andy smoothes her hand down the front of her clothing which is when she realizes that it’s somehow not the gorgeous new Stella McCartney she picked out for herself this morning.

In fact, Andy kind of looks like she’s channeling Debbie Harry - her t-shirt hangs off one shoulder, showing off a blue bra strap, and her jeans are skintight but ripped (purposefully, it seems, rather than from the collision). Andy knows that they sometimes dress down on days when Miranda is out of the country, but this outfit is going to give the staff of _Runway_ one big, collective stroke. What the hell?

“Just to show there’s no hard feelings,” Andy continues, but she feels shaky now. “How about you take me to the Elias-Clarke building? There’s a big tip in it for you.”

“No need, miss,” the cabbie replies, still looking her up and down suspiciously. “This trip is on me.”

Andy scans the skyline for familiar landmarks. Usually the Empire State or the Chrysler will do, but the buildings around her are just a little too tall to allow it. Just as she completes her circle, Andy freezes completely.

She’s looking south now, she confirms, checking a sign to confirm that she’s on West. There’s a glimmer of water that just might be the Hudson. The edge of the Statue of Liberty is certainly in her sightline. But to Lady Liberty’s left loom two very unexpected, very tall buildings.

 _Oh thank God_ , Andy thinks, actually sighing in relief. _This is just a seriously messed up dream_.

 

*

The Elias-Clarke building looms over her in a reassuring way. Andy debates a Starbucks run, but luckily her dream doesn’t want to be that dull and she strides right in. There’s a new security guard, which automatically makes Andy’s heart sink. With her pass missing, she’d been hoping to be waved through by a familiar face. If this is the root of her work anxiety, she has got to get trawling the Want Ads again. Just as she’s about to throw herself on his mercy for a Visitor’s Pass, Andy notices that the row of brass turnstiles is somehow not there. Finally, an upside to her brain missing out details.

She can feel work mode setting in as she rides the elevator: even in her dreams she’s still a little terrified of Miranda, or at least of disappointing Miranda. So if she’s a little distracted on stepping off on the 17th floor, perhaps that’s why she squeals when someone talks to her unexpectedly. 

“You’re just getting in?” A familiar voice asks. Andy turns around at the sound of Nigel’s voice, but her mouth drops open at the sight of him. 

Well, for a start, he has a full head of shiny, dark hair, although the hairline could charitably be described as ‘receding’. Gone are his signature thick glasses, though he’s squinting a little like he might be missing them, as he looks at a stack of photos balanced on one arm. He’s wearing clothes so conservative that Andy wonders who her brain is confusing him with, although in place of a necktie he is at least wearing an extravagant red cravat with his sober pinstripe suit. 

“Um, yeah?” Andy finally answers, still staring at Nigel and marveling at her own eye for detail. It’s like she could reach out and touch him, and she almost does exactly that. 

“Well, your new boss starts today. The New York Magazine boys told me over drinks that she is a bitch on wheels, so I wouldn’t hang around.”

Andy nods, wanting to laugh at having conjured up a new boss for herself. 

“Right, sure thing, Nigel.”

“Oh, you’ve bothered to do some research. Maybe you won’t get fired on your first day.” Andy can’t help giggling at that, which just makes Nigel raise his eyebrows in surprise. “So long as Hope doesn’t catch you looking like that. Work clothes, dear. Working for a fashion magazine doesn’t mean you should dress like you’re in one.”

Andy turns to walk down the corridor to her desk, wondering if she’ll have mentally redecorated to make it look a bit less sterile than the average plastic surgeon’s office. Runway’s obsession with white makes Andy perpetually nervous about spilling or marking things. Nigel calls out as she walks away.

“That’s Hope’s office down there--do you have a death wish?”

Shrugging, Andy takes off in the direction Nigel is now pointing in. What does it matter, in the grand scheme of things? The halls are darker, like she predicted. They look like any other generic office, and it’s kind of comforting. At least the framed Runway covers look vaguely correct. She’s almost out of sight when Nigel makes his parting shot.

“Miranda... whatever-her-name-is, is due any minute now. Better not let her catch you looking like you just rolled in from CBGB’s, either. I hear she’s a bit of a taskmaster, so rather you than me.”

Wow, Andy smirks as she walks into what looked a lot like Nigel’s office. Even in her dreams of work-related freedom, Miranda is inescapable. Figures, she snorts, as she opens the closet in the corner of the office, finding a selection of suits and skirts hanging there. As she puzzles over clothes that look like something her mom used to wear to work while Andy was in grade school, she doesn’t notice the sudden presence of another person in the room.

When Miranda speaks, it’s at a perfectly normal volume, and Andy feels her blood run cold.

*

_Miss Sachs? Andrea? Can you hear us?_

*

The man’s voice seems to be coming out of the walls, and Andy covers her ears instinctively. The room goes very, very white and then she can see green tiles, and some vague people-type shapes in pale blue shirts. Miranda, and Nigel’s office, have faded away completely and Andy wonders what the hell just happened to her dream.

*

_Andrea, I need you to stay with me. Andrea!_

*

The man’s voice is gone now, and Andy realizes that Miranda is staring at her like Andy just screamed out loud. Or wore Crocs to work. Miranda, who’s wearing something with shoulder pads. Miranda, whose hair is dark with just the occasional streak of white, like expensive marble turned into hair much longer than that signature bob. Andy wouldn’t recognize her, hardly, if not for those goddamn piercing eyes. Those haven’t changed a bit, though the eyeshadow is more vibrant--closer, in fact, to something that Emily would wear.

“Hi-i-i, Miranda,” Andy says, still shaking. The world seems a little tilted on its axis, and if she doesn’t sit down soon she’s probably going to puke. And why the hell can she feel that so strongly?

“Listen,” Andy says before dream!Miranda can insult her using one of Andy’s subconscious fears. “I know this isn’t real, so just don’t say anything. God, I have to wake up.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Miranda hisses, her eyes flashing to a deeper shade that’s almost all gray. Andy marvels at the accuracy of that particular detail. Her spine tightens in recognition.

“I think I might be?” Andy squeaks. “Or dreaming. Probably dreaming. I just need to find a way to wake myself up.”

“Is it so unreasonable to expect you’d show up for work feeling ‘awake’? Did you think the job came with naptime? I don’t know where you’ve worked before, but this is no kindergarten.”

“Right. I’ll just... get changed, then?”

“Why would you want to do that?” Miranda sing-songs, so it turns out some habits really do die hard.

“Uh, Nigel said that the dress code is--”

“I don’t know who Nigel is, but all that matters is that he is not me. I am going to shake this magazine up, Andréa. This magazine has a legacy any publication would kill for, and yet in the past eight years it has become dull, pedestrian, even conservative. Is there any bigger crime in fashion than being conservative? I don’t think so.”

Well, at least in this incarnation Miranda still answers her own questions, Andy thinks with relief.

“How do you know my name? I mean, if this is your… our first day?”

“It’s written here,” Miranda jabs a finger at a memo, and Andy decides to take her word for it.

“Well, can I get you anything?” Andy asks, figuring she should also stick to what she knows.

“If I want something, I’ll tell you. I won’t have time for pointless questions,” Miranda snaps, with just the hint of an eye roll.

“Okay,” Andy says, and she decides it’s time to take a break from this version of Miranda. “I’ll just go fetch us some coffee.”

*

Andy’s pouring coffee in the kitchen because her dream has yet to conjure up a single Starbucks cup, never mind a whole store, when another familiar person walks in.

“Emily!” Andy gasps. “I never thought I’d be so glad to see you!”

“I beg your pardon?” Emily shoots back. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but it can’t be me.”

Still English, still snooty, still looking at Andy like she’s something the cat dragged in; how can this not be Emily? And yet... Andy stares at the high cheekbones, the downturned corners of the mouth and realizes that it’s like Emily but somehow not quite right. Her subconscious must be getting a few details wrong, which is bizarre given that Andy spends ten hours a day facing Emily.

“Em, it’s me. Come on,” Andy pleads.

“My name is Evelyn,” the other woman replies, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl. “What on earth are you wearing?”

“Um, clothes?” Andy throws out there, until she’s temporarily blinded by some kind of white flash.

When she can see again, Andy is alone in the kitchen and feeling that something is very, very wrong. It’s only when her eyes alight on the New York cityscape print on the wall that it comes hurtling back to her; the yellow cab against the black and white buildings leaps out of the wall until she’s seeing the cab that hit her.

Hit her.

“Oh God,” she mutters as the world disappears in a blaze of white.

*

_We’re going to need to put in a central line. Stabilize the neck. Lift on my count. 1-2-3._

*

“Argh!” Andy comes to with a start as about a gallon of water splashes on her face. “Who’s trying to drown me?”

“It was one glass,” Nigel says, nonplussed. “Evie said you went down like you’d been shot.”

“Nigel,” Andy clings to the familiarity of the name, even as the water drips off the end of her nose. “Nigel, Nigel, Nigel.” It feels like a hundred years ago, slinking into his office and begging a favor that would change her life. She’s about to do it again, because this dream is starting to feel a lot more like a nightmare.

“Yes?” He asks, taking a nervous step back. This is not the polished, sarcastic Nigel that she knows.

Sitting up, carefully, Andy grabs for the lapels of his blazer.

“What year is it?” She asks, staring down his scoff of disbelief. “What. Year. Is. It?”

“Get off the floor,” another voice says from behind Andy, and the tone is enough to send everyone scuttling away from her. She turns, pulling herself up on the nearest chair, and faces down Miranda. The break room is empty except for the two of them.

“You were late this morning,” Miranda begins, her voice still not as whispery as Andy’s used to, but the steel in it is familiar. She doesn’t bother protesting that she got in before Miranda. “You’re dressed like you just got back from a wild night out, and you look like a ghost wearing too much makeup to boot. I expect my staff to be prompt, fashionable, and not insane. And for the record, it’s 1980. Now, where’s my coffee?”

*

“How did you know?” Miranda asks, breaking the silence after almost ten excruciating minutes. Andy has been trying to hide behind what is nominally ‘her’ desk, a teak monstrosity with an IBM electric typewriter and a Rolodex that looks like it should come with its own monkey to turn the handle. Either she has incredibly detailed memories of her early childhood and the technology around then, or something way, way weirder than a dream is happening right now. She needs a quiet place and maybe a notepad and pen to write down all the possibilities, before she just gives in and admits that the stress of Runway has finally driven her all the way around the bend. If she concentrates on her breathing, she can ignore the persistent memory of a yellow taxi smacking right into her side.

“Hmm?” Andy asks, not trusting herself to speak after the outburst over in the kitchen area. She gapes openly though as Miranda fishes in her purse and pulls out a pack of Marlboros and lights one, not so much as hesitating to see if the sprinklers might react.

“My coffee? How did you know I like it this way?”

“Well, you’re a dream version of my actual boss, only we seem to have gone all Mad Men about it tonight. I am never having Gorgonzola again, let me tell ya. I thought I’d stop those weird eating habits when Nate moved out but--”

Miranda’s glare could wither and dry out a cactus at twenty paces. Andy feels her mouth snap shut from sheer good sense. If this is some kind of alternate reality, or there are people somewhere beside her now who can hear all of this nonsense, she doesn’t want to be strapped into a straitjacket before she can get a chance to snap out of it. If this is a response to trauma, she wants every scrap of energy to go towards healing and being in the right world again, not wasted on arguing with detailed figments of her imagination. For now, she’s going to have to stick to the one survival plan Emily ever instilled in her: just. go. with. it. Play along, smile, and don’t ever let Miranda know that you’re out of your depth.

“I mean, I uh, guessed? And asked at your old job?”

Miranda nods, eyes narrowing as she takes a long drag from the cigarette, followed by an almost grateful gulp of her coffee.

“When you came in this morning, was there anything lying around I should read? Any memos, any mail…?

“Nope.” Andy scans the room with frantic eyes in case she’s missed something, but aside from the shelves of back issues and some lookbooks stacked on the room’s central table, all seems to be in order. “I can check your e… I’ll keep an eye out for the mail cart.”

“We have a meeting,” Miranda continues, multi-tasking as usual by alternating between the ashtray, mug and at least three different publications spread out across her desk. “Tell me you at least have shorthand? I don’t wait for other people to send out the minutes.”

Andy nods, grateful Northwestern had still offered that as part of her journalism electives. If her own brain is creating this torture chamber, it’s at least giving her credit for the hours put in mastering all kinds of outdated skills.

“Sure. Do you know where this meeting is, or…?”

“By the room number I’m guessing it’s down one level,” Miranda looks at the piece of paper without squinting and without even reaching for her reading glasses. “1667, wherever that is.”

“Oh,” Andy breathes in recognition. “The Closet. Sure, I can take you right there.”

“It’s an editorial meeting. With Hope chairing it,” Miranda points out. “So while they might do things differently at whichever stenographer pool you crawled out of, I assure you that the editor-in-chief of the world’s most famous fashion magazine does not conduct the most vital meeting of the week in a closet. Or a cupboard. Or under anyone’s desk. Now, move.”

Andy scurries out, praying silently for either wakefulness or some kind of drug-induced oblivion. Miranda, when handled through technology and instant emails, is difficult enough. In this strange new situation? Andy isn’t sure she’ll last the day.


End file.
